4.09.2017

What You Can't See Can Still Hurt You

Eden Robinson - Son of a Trickster

I love listening to Eden Robinson in interviews. Her laugh is infectious. She's funny, smart, down-to-earth. And also, she can write like a demon. Check her out in Dina Del Bucchia and Daniel Zomperelli'sCan't Lit episode 043. While you're there, subscribe to their podcast, because you'll love it and it's great. I read a chapter of this quickly before sleep one night and then the next night stayed up from 10 until 2 finishing it in one go. Yep. That readable. Also, the characters and mythology are so perfectly bound in each other that there is not even one moment of: "wait - what?"

Jared is a young teen with normal teen problems: is he really the son of a trickster? And what does that mean if he is? Are some of his friends just enabling his partying spirit? Why does he have weird vivid archetypal dreams? Does new that girl, Sarah, really like him or are those fireflies dancing above her head just happy to see him (sorry - "ultra-dimensional beings")? Will Mrs. Jaks, his friend and next door neighbour, succumb to her illness and what will Mr. Jaks do without her if she does?

It's really difficult not to give in to spoilers when talking about this book and since part of it's amazing readability is not knowing what is coming next, I'm going to spare you a lengthy plot summary here, and let you experience the book without much background.

I'll just say this - there is real world and other world and Jared can see both but doesn't know it. In the meantime real life is not being super kind to him; his parents are divorced, other kids are awful, and his mother has had some terrible boyfriends (and by terrible, we are not talking apathetic - we're talking really awful men). And, Jared has a voice in his head that kinda sorta doesn't seem like your regular run-of-the-mill conscience voice.

I was so happy to hear that Eden Robinson is expanding this book to a trilogy because this story is alive and is dancing above my head right now, saying:

"You are words. Your soul is the poem. The struggle to make mortal words say the infinite unsayable is the struggle that defines sentience."